I don’t think it is all that helpful to contrast pro-peace BDS materials with pro-war Zionism. Pro-war propaganda is pro war, and pro peace propaganda is pro peace. People on both sides are really really frustrated with how complex getting the peace process to work has been. There are people on both sides who want to form human connections and work things out. There are people on both sides who want more violence. 12-8 years ago there was strong Palestinian support for suicide bombing as a tactic, while today their has been a change in attitude in the West Bank because those tactics were disastrously unsuccessful in diminishing the occupation.

The best way to deal with pro-war elements is to create a situation where a peace can be achieved more cheaply than war. This isolates the people interested in war and pulls away their mass support.

@CDHost… peace can ALWAYS be achieved more cheaply than war – NOTHING is more costly than war.

The problem for the whole of humanity is that war is immensely PROFITABLE for the cronies of those who start them – the depraved, degenerate, parasitic sociopaths like Blair, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Churchill, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Amin, Howard, Obama and the rest of the parasite classes.

It is profitable in turn, because the COSTS are borne by the tax-base, while the REVENUES go to the cronies.

Read Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket” or Randolph Bourne’s “War is the Health of the State”.

Every person who thinks that government is required to alleviate some or other small-scale social ill, forgets that government – and ONLY government – has the wherewithal to prosecute wide-scale, industrial-strength atrocities.

joe said,

How do you have peace when the occupier who has the power will not negotiate and continues to commit genocide, harassment and all other kinds of ills.
How do the defenceless force the world bullies to make peace They cant because it is not in the israeli plan. The zionists do NOT want peace, never have and only will when their back is against the wall. Cant see that coming any time soon tho, not with the nuclear arsenal and the back up of most western powers.

I don’t believe that peace is always less costly than war, I will agree that countries frequently make a bad judgement as to how expensive wars would be. I think it is also important to realize that even though wars themselves are frequently cost negative the ability to plausibly threaten war is a cost positive.

I don’t agree with you on war profiteering. There are far too many cronies who lose money as a result of the disruptions caused by war, to see this as a pure corruption issue. Moreover, because wars require deep public support they frequently empower the population relative to the cronies in terms of their ability to negotiate for better wages and government policies which support the population. I do agree with you that war is the health of the state and having a whole lot less of them would be in everyone’s interests.

How do you have peace when the occupier who has the power will not negotiate and continues to commit genocide, harassment and all other kinds of ills.

I don’t see any evidence that the occupier won’t negotiate. In fact they seem to have a rather consistent pattern of being quite eager for negotiations when they see those negotiations as advancing their interests, the case with just about everyone. For example the Israelis have been very actively negotiating this entire decade for the upgraded trade status they’ve achieved with the EU. They have been very actively negotiating with the Egyptians on joint security arrangements.

And finally they have been quite active in negotiating security arrangement with Fatah and Hamas all through this decade whenever Fatah and Hamas have wanted to bring down the level of violence. They aren’t particularly interested in negotiating a final property agreement with the Palestinians because the Palestinians are consistently demanding more than Israel wants to give. Those negotiations have mostly deadlocked because the sides are too far apart.

But imagine a situation where the Palestinian side offered major concessions. For example imagine if Abbas asked Netanyahu to assist in a migration of the Palestinians to Jordan, or if Abbas indicated he was interested in serving as a provincial administrator in an apartheid regime or if Abbas indicated he was interested in working jointly to diminish Iranian influence on Gaza. Similarly if Khaled Meshaal indicated a desire for Gaza to become an Egyptian province, the Israelis would be thrilled to negotiate to help make that happen. Of course Netanyahu would be actively negotiating if he saw advantage to them.

Given the choice between a fair settlement based on resolution 242 and war the Israelis narrowly choose war. That’s different than 15 years ago where they narrowly choose peace. There isn’t a broad based rejection of negotiations there has been a shift where about 20% of the population no longer believes the Palestinians are able to deliver their side of the bargain and/or no longer believes the costs are worth it.

Ponce – I get a real “buzz” out of doing the same. Whenever I’m talking about the Palestinian/israeli “question” it doesn’t take long for someone to say that I’m obviously an anti Semite. “An Anti Semite” I usually thunder – How dare you call me an anti semite – I support the Palestinian cause wholeheartedly !! How can I be an anti Semite?? That usually stops them in their tracks with a puzzled look on their faces and I then go on to berate them for arguing about something of which they obviously know so little about !! I then inform them that the Palestinians are ALL Semetic and that the vast majority of Jews are NOT !! Gets them everytime I then inform them that their views are a product of a life of carefull spin anddisinformation and that until I discovered the real story I had been as propagandaized as them.

You are confusing the lexical structure of a word with its meaning. A cathouse is not a place where cats live. Anti-semitism was a word invented by German and French nationalists who wished to deny ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity full citizenship. The use of the word “semite” was racial but it did not then nor does it now apply to people with no biologically Jewish connection.